1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for winding a coil about a core such as a television picture tube deflection yoke core.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior art toroidal coil winding machines, for example, are of the type described in co-pending application Ser. No. 503,681 filed Sept. 6, 1974, invented by Haslau et al. and assigned to the assignee of the present invention, which application is a continuation of Ser. No. 278,351 filed Aug. 7, 1972, now abandoned. In the co-pending application, a coil winding machine is described in which a clamp is provided for clamping a television picture tube deflection yoke core. The clamp described, while an improvement over prior art clamps, is cumbersome in that a number of manual steps need to be performed by an operator in clamping and unclamping the core as a coil is being wound thereon. The clamping and unclamping steps require the immediate attention of an operator as the machine approaches certain coil winding positions. These positions, in particular, are those locations in the winding process in which the clamp can mechanically interfere with the shuttle and magazine. To provide for these difficulties, the prior art machines typically include a plurality of clamps which an operator manually engages or disengages from the core whenever the machine during the winding process causes the clamp, shuttle, magazine and machine frame to approach each other. However, such a process is cumbersome and slow for certain machine cycles in which the machine rapidly rotates the deflection yoke core.